FEMA wants to house 400 families in Gridley

Share this:

A burned-out Nash Metropolitan lies Wednesday in front of the ruins of a home on Foster Road in Paradise. A Federal Emergency Management Agency official this week explained to the Board of Supervisors plans for temporarily housing several hundred of the families who lost homes in the Camp Fire.(Steve Schoonover — Enterprise-Record)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to put 405 mobile or manufactured homes on a site in Gridley, in addition to the 250-home group site in Chico that was subject of a Chico City Council meeting Wednesday.

Kevin Hannes, who’s in charge of FEMA’s efforts in response to the Camp Fire, Tuesday told the Butte County Board of Supervisors the Gridley proposal will be going before the City Council there on Monday.

He said his boss wants the group sites under construction before Christmas. Families are expected to be moving in within 45 days, with full occupancy in 120 days.

He said it would be up to the parents to decide if they wanted to keep school-aged children in their previous district, or move them to Gridley or Chico schools.

Hannes said 705 displaced families have been identified so far that will need the housing and qualify for it.

Some of those families are already being placed, according to Hannes, as FEMA has leased 105 RV or mobile home pads located in commercial parks in the Sacramento Valley. It’s in negotiation for another 250.

While that’s sufficient capacity for the number of families qualified so far, “I think that number will go up,” Hannes told the board.

It takes 72 to 96 hours to place a home on a site once it’s been secured. Almost all the homes are being purchased new from dealers in California, he said.

The families placed in the homes are supposed to be able to live there rent-free for 18 months from the date of the disaster declaration — Nov. 11. He said he thought that period would be extended.

If it is, the tenants would be charged market-rate rent for the duration. It’s not an open-ended option though. “Once we move them in, they need a plan to move out,” Hannes told the supervisors, saying staff would work with the residents to keep them on track.

FEMA’s plan is that once the debris has been removed from the property of the trailer dwellers, the trailers would be moved there if possible. “We want to bring those communities back,” Hannes said.

The direct housing program is only part of the federal government’s Camp Fire effort, he told the supervisors.

More than 20,000 households have registered with FEMA, with 10,600 of their properties already inspected. Grants totaling $38.6 million have been awarded to almost 6,000 households. Several dozen families have received the maximum grant that is in excess of $34,000.

In addition, the Small Business Administration has approved $114 million in low-interest loans to California fire victims. Hannes said 70 to 80 percent of that was in the Camp Fire area, and almost all of it was residential rather than commercial loans, indicating people are planning to rebuild their homes.

He also praised the local effort, saying FEMA’s philosophy for responding to disaster is a “locally executed, state managed, federally supported effort.”

“Your staff is setting the example of what to do,” Hannes told the board.

Steve Schoonover is the city editor of the Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register. A resident of Chico since 1963 and a 1975 graduate of Chico State University, he has been with the E-R since 1980.